On Wednesday night, Cal men’s basketball defeated Saint Martin’s 98-75 in their exhibition game. Grad transfer guard Kareem South led the way for Cal with 23 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists while sophomore guard Matt Bradley finished with 18 points and 5 assists. Freshman guard Alex Schumacher was the top performer for Saint Martin’s with 21 points.
“It’s great to finally play a game,” Cal head coach Mark Fox said after the game. “It’s why we all fell in love with the game was a chance to compete and to play. So, it was really good for our team to actually have a chance to play. We did a lot of good things; we have a lot of teachable moments that we can look back on; Saint Martin’s obviously is an excellent 3-point shooting team, which, that’s really all we knew about them coming in. We had no game film. Nothing to prepare on. But, credit to them for shooting the 3-point shot well. We made a couple slight adjustments in the second half and I thought our defense was better in the second half. But, to put up 98 points in a game is a plus. We had a lot of guys contribute and it’s a good starting point for us to build on.”
Cal got out to an early 19-9 lead with 14:01 to go in the first half as Matt Bradley and Kareem South got things going from beyond the arc. Bradley was up to 6 points, doing a good job of pacing the Golden Bears early. With 11:42 to go, Cal was up 22-12 after sophomore forward Jacobi Gordon converted a nice 3-point play following a missed shot inside from freshman guard Dimitrios Klonaras.
With 7:07 to go in the half, Cal was up 34-22 as Bradley continued to ball out. As for freshman center Lars Thiemann, he started to get things going as well with a nice block inside, showing why he’s projected to be a dominant rim protector for this Cal program.
“Lars has an unbelievable demeanor,” Fox said. “It’s hard to rattle Lars. He’s very poised, he’s not wise beyond his years, but he’s very poised and he keeps the same level whether he makes a mistake or he makes a good play. But I think his poise is a real benefit to him. He did a lot of solid things tonight, blocked a couple shots, should have had a couple more, but finished some plays around the basket, and obviously for his first game and first time in front of people, it’s a good start.”
“It was a great experience to finally be on the field,” Thiemann added. “I’ve been waiting very long for this moment and yeah, it felt pretty good on the field.”
Right as it looked like Cal was going to go up big in the first half, Saint Martin’s came roaring back thanks to the lights out shooting of Schumacher and others. Cal was up by only 7 points (37-30) with 3:37 to go in the first half as Saint Martin’s was shooting 12-24 from the field. If Cal was going to pull away, their defense was going to need to step up.
With 2:13 to go in the half, Cal saw their lead trimmed down to just 3 points (39-36) as Schumacher hit another 3-pointer, giving him 12 points for the night. Fortunately for Cal, Kareem South was able to quickly respond at the foul line, giving them a 41-36 lead.
Rather than letting Cal build up a double-digits lead, Saint Martin’s was able to shave Cal’s lead back down to 3 points, trailing 44-41 at halftime. Bradley and South led Cal with 11 points each while Schumacher led all scorers with 17 points on 7-9 shooting from the field and 3-3 shooting from 3-point range.
Cal’s offense looked solid in the first half, but it was the defense, especially on the perimeter that was the issue. Saint Martin’s did a good job at finding the gaps in Cal’s defense and making them pay. Cal needed to step up their defense in the second half.
To Cal’s credit, their defense did indeed step up to start the second half, going up 57-45 with 14:59 to go. It helped that Schumacher got hurt for a little bit to start the half, but Cal still was playing with a lot more defensive intensity. With 11:43 to go, Cal extended their lead slightly 69-56 as South (19 points) and Bradley (13 points) continued to lead the charge. After not seeing any action in the first half, freshman guard Joel Brown came in and delivered 5 early assists to go along with 0 turnovers. His facilitating and ability to get others involved made a noticeable impact on Cal’s play.
“There’s just one, it’s too technical to cover in detail here, but there’s one thing we hadn’t even talked about in practice yet,” Fox said of Cal’s second half defensive adjustments. “We just haven’t had a chance to get to it. And so we just, it’s one scheme we hadn’t taught our team yet. So, we just kinda taught it, really, I think we taught it in a timeout. It slowed them down a little bit and just a product of having 17 new guys and not having everything quite in yet.
“But I don’t want to take anything away from Saint Martin’s because they have a very good shooting team…Yeah, I thought Joel when he got in there, he really did a nice job making people better. I thought he impacted our team defensively and obviously all those freshmen are trying to grow up and I thought he had some good moments.”
With 7:48 to go, Cal was up 79-61 as Bradley (16 points) nailed another 3-pointer. At this point, it was clear that Cal was going to pull away with ease. The only question would be whether or not they would crack 100 points.
“I think the thing that I like about our team is that we tend to practice very unselfishly,” Fox said. “I don’t think we have anybody that’s a ball stopper. I think they enjoy helping each other get better. We talk about trying to make each other better and tonight I think we were able to do that.”
With 3:48 to go, Cal was up 88-70 as South led all scorers with 23 points on 9-18 shooting from the field. Cal was holding Saint Martin’s to 7-19 (36.8%) shooting in the second half, doing a much better job at defending.
In the end, Cal wasn’t able to get to 100 points, but they were able to cruise to a 98-75 victory. It went about as expected. It was as bit tight early on, but in the end, they figured it out, working out some kinks along the way.
“I haven’t spent one second looking at Pepperdine,” Fox said of their next game. “We’ll start that process now. We’ve been totally focused on this game and our team. There’s a lot of things that we have to improve on. Our defense is still not anywhere near. I mean, it’s probably not in the same galaxy of where it needs to be to beat good teams.
“But we’ll learn a lot from tonight’s game. Obviously, Pepperdine has a very good team. Some experience coming back. Coach Romar is a terrific and experienced coach, so we’ll have to play a lot lot better next week to have an opportunity to win.”
Cal’s game against Pepperdine is slated for Tuesday, November 5th. That game will tipoff at 7:00 PM PST on Pac-12 Networks.
Note: Cal was without Juhwan Harris-Dyson, Kuany Kuany, and Blake Welle tonight. Below is what Mark Fox said about their status:
“We got some dings, which I’m not going to talk about their medical. But I think they’ll all be back soon. But, obviously he [Kuany] has a big brace on his leg, so hopefully he can return to some point. I’m not sure when a timetable would be, but all those guys that didn’t see action tonight should hopefully be back in action soon. We will redshirt Blake Welle, but the rest of them should all be back hopefully soon.”
